


A Postcard for a Special Occasion

by alexygalexy



Series: Voltron Week 2016 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, also not edited whOOPS, angsty mc angst face here prepare to cRY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7759579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexygalexy/pseuds/alexygalexy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance writes his mom a letter from space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Postcard for a Special Occasion

**Author's Note:**

> This is the postcard I was referencing: http://rlv.zcache.com/varadero_beach_cuba_postcard-r17cda597379245dfa48e00170dcd9c98_vgbaq_8byvr_512.jpg
> 
> FYI this was written before age confirmations so I mention Lance being 18 at the garrison (implying he's 18/19 now) - since it's like one line and there's nothing to do with romance in here I personally don't feel the need to edit it but if for whatever reason you want me to change it leave a comment or message me on tumblr or something and I'll be on it asap!

Lance wrapped his arms across his chest, hugging himself tightly. His knees were bent in front of him and his head slightly bowed, eyes closed. He sat on his bed without moving, except for his hands squeezing his side as he tried to focus on some other sensation so he wouldn’t cry. He drummed his fingertips, thinking about exactly how his skin landed with a dull thud on the fabric of his coat. 

 

He released the tension in his hands, allowing them to flatten. He heard a slight crinkling sound coming from the left side of his jacket. He clenched his hands again - the crinkling object was the last thing he needed to think about right now. He managed to catch the thing in his now tight grip, causing another bout of noises. Despite Lance clenching his eyes shut and tossing his hands off his side and bringing them to cover his face instead, tears still began to leak from his eyes.

 

_ Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit … _

 

He swore every time a tear dropped. This is not what he needed to be doing. He was supposed to be out with the team; training or bonding or eating or being the bawdy humour any group of teenagers needed. That was his job - to be there for the others; whether that be when they needed protection in a fight or when they needed a good laugh. He did that. He  _ didn’t _ leave the training deck claiming he needed to use the bathroom then lock himself in his room and cry for twenty minutes. That  _ wasn’t _ his job. But he was still doing it, and he hated it.

 

He pressed the bases of his hands into his eyes so hard he started seeing colors; the tears still wet his palms. He knew this wasn’t helping but he kept his hands there rather than dropping them, which would have inevitably lead to him punching something out of anger.  _ Why  _ was he like this?  _ Why _ couldn’t he get a damn hold on himself? It’s not like the other paladins didn’t miss home too, but he was being such a baby about it. God, Lance, grow up. You’re not a baby anymore; you can’t cry whenever you need and expect Mom to be there to magically fix everything.

 

He cursed himself for that thought. Of course Mom couldn’t be here, she was halfway across the fucking universe, maybe further. She probably thought Lance was fucking dead. What must she feel like? Does she miss him? Will she still miss him if he ever makes it back to Earth? What if she’s just accepted that he’s gone and has moved on and won’t take him back when he returns? What if -

 

‘Get a  _ hold of yourself! _ ” Lance whispered through gritted teeth, startling himself with the sound of his own voice. He dropped his hands from his eyes now, clenching and releasing fists of bed sheet on either side of him. He just … he wished he’d gotten a chance to tell his mom what happened. 

 

Barely thinking about what he was doing, his right hand reached across his stomach and slipped inside of his coat, fumbling for the secret pocket he had ripped in the lining. He found it and stuck his fingers inside, searching for a certain something. He brushed against something plastic-y and immediately latched onto it, drawing it out of his jacket with care. He slowly brought it into his line of sight, half excited and half terrified to look at it again.

 

In his fingers, Lance was holding a postcard, still in it’s plastic wrapping, though the cellophane was starting to yellow with age. The card itself was in pristine condition, if a bit wrinkled from having travelled in Lance’s pocket since the day he first left home to go to the garrison. Currently, he was looking at the backside, with space to write a message and space to address it. He turned it over slowly, looking at the picture which had brought him so much comfort in his dorm room at the garrison.

 

The turquoise water was so calm and clear that if you blurred your eyes, you couldn’t tell where the sea ended and the sky began. The beach in front was made of light sand, perfectly smooth and empty except for an abandoned beach hut. It was never like that in real life, always crowded with families and pets and resort workers, but Lance preferred it that way. Other people’s happiness could rub off on him that way. He had loved to run through other people’s footsteps, trying to figure out where they might have been headed before the ever-shifting sand filled the indents up and caused him to lose the trail. 

 

There was a pink stone wall, only a few feet high, serving as a barrier between the beach and the resort. Lance had distinct memories of running along the top of the wall while his mother yelled at him to get down, laughing and bouncing from foot to foot on the warm surface. He remembered jumping off it, only to land face down in the sand. He still remembered trying to yell at his laughing siblings; only to find his mouth filled with the grains, unable to do anything except splutter uselessly.

 

At the end of the day, Lance had pulled on his mother’s sleeve, dragging her towards one of the souvenir carts lining the beach. He begged her to let him a buy a postcard, the pictures of the beach were also so beautiful. She had asked him why on earth he needed a postcard, what would he use it for, who was he going to write? Lance had looked her right in the eyes and said that he would send it to her when something really special happened. She rolled her eyes, but handed over the money to buy it anyways. 

 

Lance had almost written her the postcard when he was twelve and wanted to get a pet dog. He decided against it, choosing to beg in person when he could use his puppy dog eyes to his full advantage.

 

Lance had almost written her the postcard when he was thirteen and graduated middle school as valedictorian, but he ended up just showing her the certificate given to him by the principal instead.

 

Lance had almost written her the postcard when he was fifteen and realized he wasn’t straight, but his mother asked him if he had anything he wanted to talk about and he spilled everything out while she held him in her arms before he got the chance to write any of it down.

 

Lance had almost written her the postcard when he was seventeen and got accepted to the Galaxy Garrison, but while he was walking home from school his mom called him on the phone to tell him she’d seen the letter in the mail.

 

Lance had almost written her the postcard when he was eighteen and officially upgraded to fighter class but he decided that wasn’t a special enough occasion. He wanted to save it for something even better. 

 

Lance rubbed the plastic covering. This postcard had become such a normal part of his life, always making sure to stick into his coat any time he left the house; keeping it in the breast pocket of his garrison uniform, laying it on the table next to him while he studied, placing it on his bedside table while he slept. It was odd how the card inspired him to work hard so he’d have something special to write to his mom about. Lance couldn’t recall how many times he’d dried homesick tears off the wrapping with his t-shirt; how many times he’d run his fingers across the seams, debating whether it was worth it to finally open the thing up and write it. How many times he’d felt its rectangular outline in his pocket and gained a new wave of courage to do whatever he had to do. How many times he’d sat in this exact same room, staring at the serene beach and laughing coldly at how unlike real life the photograph was, how much crazier everything was (both on the beach and in general). How many times he’d been grateful to have this memento with him because he was starting to feel like he’d be out here long enough to forget everything about earth except what this postcard looked like. 

 

Lance ripped the seams slower than he thought was humanly possible. The sound of plastic ripping filled the entire room, pushing out to the walls and deep inside Lance’s head. He clicked open a pen and started writing. 

 

* * *

 

 

Lance opened the first door to the airlock, placing the postcard on the metal floor. He shut the door again, careful to let it close all the way before starting the countdown for the outer door to open. He pressed his nose to the window as the numbers dropped to single digits, watching as the airlock crept open. The postcard fluttered in the air, spinning slightly as it was pulled out into space. It was whisked away quickly, becoming yet another small white speck against a background of stars. 

 

Lance felt odd, not having the card with him anymore, but he was slightly comforted by another. There was no air resistance in space. That card would keep floating, bumping into debris and moving until either it was sucked into something’s gravity or until it was picked up by someone. Potentially, though very very unlikely, that card would make it all the way across the universe until it passed it was picked up by someone on a mission from earth. His mother might finally get his message. 

 

The airlock doors began to close again, cutting off Lance’s view. He took a shuddering breath. All those words he’d written were gone now, going off to places Lance could never predict. He wouldn’t worry about them any more, he told himself. What’s done was done. He just hoped that someone got his message. 

 

* * *

 

 

_ Hey, Mom.  _

 

_ I guess this is a special enough situation for me to finally write. Did you forget about this card? I didn’t. So, um, yeah. You’re probably really worried about me. Sorry, this wasn’t planned. I don’t know what the Garrison told you, but there’s no way they could’ve told you the actual truth. You probably won’t believe it. Just trust me. _

 

_ I’m in space. I have no idea where, even if I did I doubt it’s any place earth has ever been before. I’m with a few other people, some good aliens, Hunk and Pidge and Keith from the Garrison, and that guy Shiro from Kerberos. Oh yeah. The Kerberos mission didn’t crash, they were abducted by evil aliens. The same evil aliens that sent me into space in the first place and apparently they control the whole universe and I have to fight them all which is …. Well, it’s what I gotta do. I don’t really like it. _

 

_ I mean, it’s great being “defender of the universe” or whatever, it feels good when we win a battle but man, it’s so much pressure. I’m barely an adult and I have the entire universe weighing on my back. I don’t want to be responsible for this. I don’t wanna be here. I wanna be back home with you and I want to go to sleep and not worry that I’ll be woken up in the middle of the night by alarms telling me that if I’m even a few seconds too late I could end up destroying any hope the universe has for freedom and letting all my friends die or get captured and tortured and I’m supposed to know how to fight all kinds of monsters made out of alien magic that science can’t even understand and win because if I don’t win then the entire universe is ruined but I don’t know how to do that and I don’t have time to learn. I just have to hope and pray that everything works out and there’s just so going on. And I thought studying at the Garrison was stressful. Ha.  _

 

_ Mom, I miss you. I miss your hugs and how you always make me feel Ok again. You have no idea how much I want to just quit this, demand that Allura take me home and just drop me off on Earth and I leave this behind forever. But I can’t because then I’ll be abandoning my friends and my team and trillions of innocent people who are dying or will die because of this alien dictator and I don’t really have a choice when you look at it that way, do I? _

  
_ I hope you get this. If you do, don’t worry about me. I’m off in space being badass and saving planets and stuff. I’ll manage. I’ll get through it. And I’ll come right back home as soon as I’m done. I love you.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Voltron Week Day 3: Home/Family 
> 
> ITS A DAY LATE IM SORRY MY COMPUTER WAS ACTING UP LAST NIGHT
> 
> Also I hope I did Lance justice, im not really happy with the actual letter on the postcard but I just need to get this out there I'm already a day behind tughghhgfhfh f


End file.
